Southern Englands Industrial Heritage
 

My husband and I are driving from Cornwall to Kent over 4 weeks in June this year. Can anyone suggest some places to visit which will have an industiral or mechanical theme. Cornwall Tin Mines, Aqueducts, Mills, Buildings, or bridges. Something blokey to offset the houses, estates and gardens. I believe Bazalgettes Pumping station in london is very interesting too, however I havent researched that yet. I hope someone will have some first hand knowledge as these things are not covered very well.

I think you're mostly in the wrong part of the country for industrial heritage sites. What about cars? Beaulieu:

http://www.beaulieu.co.uk/beaulieu/l...l-motor-museum

How about Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire? We enjoyed our day there. We especially enjoyed Blists Hill, a recreation of a Victorian village.

There's a huge amount of industrial archaeology in southern England.

The problem is that there are few tax-subsidised theme parks based on dead industrial complexes (like Ironbridge), or the dismal leftwing propaganda stunts masquerading as history ("I'm Jack and I used to be a miner here till Maggie deprived us of our right to spend our lives miserably digging coal and dying painfully of pneumosilicosis"), that proliferate in Northern England.

Generally, you've got to:
- settle for the two closest equivalents in the Deep South: trains and boats. There's any amount of railway heritage sites (look up Didcot and Swindon, though they might be a bit north of where you want to be), restored railway lines (http://steamrailwaylines.co.uk) or Maritime Heritage stuff (just about anything in Portsmouth is pretty blokey)
- Stay in Cornwall, which DOES have a tax-subsidised heritage industry (www.historic-cornwall.org.uk), based on tin mining and the crucial steam technology it spawned
- Google Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed buildings and ships even more beautiful than the docks Jesse Hartley was building in the North. A huge swathe of them, from tiny village railway stations to whopping great bridges, still survive all over the south.
- Canals. Mostly at www.britishwaterways.co.uk
- look for other blokey things. There's not THAT much by way of redundant mines in Dorset, for example, but Tolpuddle houses Britain's premier museum of trade union activity. Local breweries aren't always visitable (though they usually have a lot of 19th c buildings or kit) - but their products are easily buyable.

That still leaves thousands of minor sites across the SE, many still in some kind of use, but not as far as I know easily researchable: it's very common, even on quite busy motorways, to spot a watermill by the side that just hasn't got dragged into the deadening hands of the conservation mafia yet. They're usually very well known locally, and local historical societies will have monographs about them: but they just aren't publicised tourist traps to compete with nearby gardens, historic ships or medieval towns.

And,unfortunately for industrial archaeologists, the economy of southern England east of Devon has been buoyant for so long that many minor buldings etc have just been cleared away. HOWEVER that does mean that there are lists of the most threatened sites at http://www.industrial-archaeology.org/arisk.htm, which is a useful source of other ideas

If others don't come up with specifics, google industrial archaeology for each of your counties (eastward: Deven, Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent).

"eastward: Deven,"

Or even Devon

Such ignorance from the posters here. They obviously are unaware that the British iron industry started in the Weald of Kent and Sussex. Unfortunately, the remains of that once great industry are now slight and little exploited.

To get a feel for this area and its past, you might like the Amberley Chalk Pits museum (www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/) or the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum (www.wealddown.co.uk). Alternatively, there are Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (www.historicdockyard.co.uk) and KentLife (www.kentlife.org.uk). Visitors to Dorset in September would probably enjoy the Great Dorset Steam Fair (www.gdsf.co.uk).

Don't forget the preserved railways. The best known is the Bluebell Railway (www.bluebell-railway.co.uk), but there are also the Swanage Railway (www.swanagerailway.co.uk) and the Kent & East Sussex (www.kesr.org.uk).

Also the railway museum at Didcot (in Oxfordshire)

http://www.didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/

The Brighton sewer tours are very interesting (smelly but bearably so) - http://www.southernwater.co.uk/homeA...tonSewerTours/ There are limited dates that these are open so booking in advance is esential. Trainers or walking boots are fine, btw. On the same page are details about Brede which I hadn't heard of but might be of interest.

Also in the same area but currently closed - I don't know when it is due to reopen but you could check the site in a few months to see of they have made any announcements - is the British Engineerium at Hove - www.britishengineerium.com/

Chatham Docks in Kent is an interesting place to visit - it was one of the great shipbuilding yards in the past. OK, it's definitely 'heritagey' now but we it kept us entertained for a couple of hours. The best part for us was going on a real naval submarine, which was an experience and a half. When we were there, it had a volunteer guide who'd served on submarines, so he was able to explain it all to us and tell us a few tales.

Not sure if you really wish to be in London, but what you're thinking of is Crossness. Unfortunately their website seems to be down this morning. As it's run by volunteers, they only run the steam engines on special occasions:

http://www.crossness.org.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmaKB_MVPu8

A similar operation is at Kew Bridge:

http://www.kbsm.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hse1aCsjeR0

I've found some brewery tours not too far from your route:
http://www.hooknortonbrewery.co.uk/p...and_museum.php
http://www.tuckersmaltings.co.uk/

Chaps, chaps:

Swindon, Didcot and Hook Norton are almost as far off these people's route as Ironbridge. But if they're thinking of detouring that much, the Wychwood Brewery's (www.wychwood.co.uk) a lot closer to their natural journey than Hookey, which - while delightful - is practically in Birmingham.

And, brewing as it does Hobgoblin, Brakspear's, Marston's and Duchy Original (not to mention Dirty Tackle), Wychwood arguably has the most interesting range of brews anywhere. Many of them using the original Brakspear kit from Henley.

You don't get much further south than Gosport, so don't overlook the submarine museum there (www.rnsubmus.co.uk). It's then not far to Fort Nelson (www.royalarmouries.org/visit-us/fort-nelson) on Portsdown Hill overlooking Portsmouth.

Wow! All the responses have been fantastic. I'm really overwhelmed. A few of these are familiar to me already but the rest I will definitely look into. To those of you who mentioned breweries GREAT IDEA! but what about Cider? Any suggestions there? He loves beer but I am definately a Cider girl.

Thankyou everyone :0)

The brewery suggestions weren't about the beer so much as about being elderly industrial plants that are still functioning and still photogenic.

Oddly, cider makers aren't photogenic in the same way. Just about everythng you could possibly want to know about cider makers in southern England came up in http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...st-england.cfm

Slightly off your track, but for a really early industrial site, you could visit Grimes Graves in Suffolk
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/s...show/nav.12454

It's a prehistoric flint mine.

Beer & old buildings in the same stop. Sounds pretty appealing to me. I expected 'boutique' breweries & cideries(?) to be like wineries. Offering tasting, meals etc. Flanneruk - thanks for the link. I will work through some of the suggestions listed.
MissPrism - unfortunately we wont be going to Suffolk in this trip. But I had added your suggestion to my Wishlist.
Thankyou